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The Best Marketing for Lawyers Has Nothing to Do With Common Sense

If you're a personal injury attorney who's been struggling with the whole legal marketing puzzle, you almost uncertainly have been pulled in multiple directions.

There are a zillion legal marketing tactics out there. There are nearly as many self-proclaimed experts on the subject who will tell you that their system is superior and that, if you fail to acquire said system or utilize their services, then your practice will ultimately be doomed.

When you’re consumed with the difficult business of running a practice, handling clients, and leading your life, this bombardment can get pretty frustrating. You would much rather spend your hours doing what you do best than you would managing your marketing process.

What Marketing Is—And What It’s Not

Many attorneys make a major mistake when it comes to their marketing. They believe that there is one “best” answer and that, if they search hard enough, they just might find it.

The best marketing for lawyers is not something you buy in a box. It’s something you develop over time—something you hone and test and build, specifically for the purpose of giving your prospects a burning desire for your services.

Not everyone has to love you! But your target clients need to love you. So if you are selling personal injury services in the Fairfax, Virginia, area, you need to figure out—on a granular, specific, emotionally honest level—what motivates those Fairfax clients, and then you must educate them about the utility and uniqueness of your services.

To make great marketing work, however, you need to have something that sets you apart.

Sure, you can fool people for a while by pummeling them with enough billboards and radio ads. But ultimately, this is going to be a difficult, if not impossible, way to drum up business. An alternate route is to really introspect: to take time to figure out what makes your firm special. What makes you special? For whom do you provide value? Why are you the best person—or the best firm—to provide that value for your target client?

These are basic questions. But developing truly compelling answers to them is not something that most people can do overnight. You really need to think through why you are in business and ultimately what makes you tick. Once you have defined that thing that sets you apart—also known as a unique selling proposition (USP)—your marketing becomes obvious. Your goal becomes single-pointed: to educate potential clients about why you are the best lawyer or best law firm at providing your specific service.

For help designing and executing a great legal marketing plan, pick up Ben Glass’s Great Legal Marketing book now. Then call us at 703-591-9829 when you're ready to go beyond the book to make your small law firm marketing the best it can be.